The Commission on the Status of Women section of the Proceedings contains the following 12 papers: "Framing Women's Health with a Sense-making Approach: Magazine Coverage of Breast Cancer and Implants" (Julie L. Andsager and Angela Powers); "Gender Roles in 'Rumplestiltskin': The Effect of Fantasy Portrayals on Real-Life…

The Advertising section of the proceedings contains the following 16 papers: "Ethics of Advertising Practitioners: An Explanation Based on a Classical Theoretical Framework" (Cornelius B. Pratt and E. Lincoln James); "Sex Roles in Frightening Film Newspaper Advertisements: An Overview of the Past 50 Years" (Melissa M. Spirek);…

This field experiment begins to build a theoretical framework for exploring the effects of media characteristics on subjects' understanding and integration of information. Students in two eighth-grade science classes wrote term papers with one class using a print encyclopedia and the other an electronic encyclopedia to conduct their research. A…

A study investigated the perceived source credibility of organizations that produce health messages. Manipulated versions of a health advertisement were generated to represent three types of organizational sources: a nonprofit source, a for-profit source, and a combination of for-profit and nonprofit sources. The advertisements were then produced…

A study examined the content of direct mail materials, distributed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) and Stop ERA groups, favoring or opposing passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. It was expected that NOW's pieces would concentrate on counteracting or counterattacking Stop ERA's arguments against the amendment (military draft, lesbian…

Comparisons were made between the use of microfiche materials and conventional printed materials for individualized instruction in two short military courses on aviation and ground maintenance. One group of students in each course used printed instructional materials and microfiche for course achievement tests, while another group used microfiche…

"Readalong," a program employing a videotape format to teach vocabulary skills to early childhood learners, was tested in an English-as-a-second-language (ESL) setting by comparing primary and advanced ESL classes using the program with classes using only the conventional teaching materials. Students received a test prior to the…

The findings of research studies that come from a variety of sources and concern newspapers, some aspects of television news, and news media audiences are summarized briefly. Among the topics are audience characteristics, content of stories, readership, headlines and makeup, editorial policy, and editorial administration and personnel. Most of the…

A study to analyze selected shortwave broadcasts in terms of the Flesch formula for readibility is presented. The study attempted to qualify elements of style based on their scripted word usage and to compare and contrast the news broadcasts of four countries in terms of gross listenability. A number of studies were conducted which applied the…

A study of the relationship between two distinct, yet intertwined populations (a university community and its surrounding community), their media use, and the ties they have to their respective communities moves research in this area forward both theoretically and methodologically. The study examined three university mass media: newspaper,…

Reports that differences between two groups of Indochinese immigrants in the United States--an English-competent group and an English-deficient group--were highly significant with respect to the variables of educational background, English language newspaper reading, interpersonal contact with Americans, and frequency of newspaper reading. (GT)

Compares the processing strategies of Indonesian and U.S. university students using an international news story attributed either to a high- or low-constraint source. Finds that audiences in censored news environments are more critical in distinguishing among news sources but less critical of the unconstrained news itself. (SR)

Reports on a study of college student preferences for learning from computer-based instruction screen designs representing four levels of screen density varied by the type of stimulus material and number of frames presented from a single lesson. The implications of the results for practice and research on computer screen design are discussed. (30…

Data were extracted from the public use samples of the 1970 and 1980 United States censuses in order to (1) determine how successful the American media have been in hiring more racial minorities and women, (2) evaluate how changes in the media labor force correlate with changes in the nature of the news and information that the news media produce,…

A compilation of papers from a joint Finnish-Russian seminar on problems of communication research, this collection presents diverse opinions and results from researchers and observers in both countries. The titles of the papers and their authors are as follows: (1) "Role of Research and Training in Mass Communication and Public Opinion"…